This is an ongoing archive and blog of reviews and commentary by W.L. Swarts!

Tuesday, July 12, 2016

An Open Letter To Donald Trump: You Won, Go Home.

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The Basics: Right now, Donald Trump's celebrity capital is at its peak: how will he spend it?

Dear Mr. Trump,

Congratulations on securing enough delegates within the Republican Party to receive their nomination to be their candidate for President Of The United States. Next week when the Republican National Convention meets and you are officially given the nomination will be very exciting for you.

I was hoping you might give me a sneak peek into what comes next. What will you do after you tell the Republicans at their Convention that you are not accepting their nomination for President?

Come on, Mr. Trump, just a hint as to what your next project is, please!

I understand that it might be difficult to discuss what your plans are for after the Convention because you do not want to ruin the surprise for everyone else, but I already get it. I know what you know about the strategy you are employing and it was absolutely brilliant.

Your only rhetorical promise in your campaign for the Republican Presidential Nomination has been to "Make America Great Again." It's a great slogan and it is not something that any single person can do within a democracy. I see what you saw at the very beginning of your campaign: the two-party dominated system within the United States is horribly broken. Most people do not believe it, but you do and you found the most impressive way to prove it to everyone in the United States.

As a candidate supported by a shocking number of registered Republican primary voters, you have absolutely proven that the leadership of the Republican Party does not represent the people they claim to lead. The very fact that a large number of establishment, life-long Republicans refuse to support your candidacy illustrates the schism between the Party and the people in the Republican Party. Your candidacy represents a number of voters in the United States and you appeal to them in a way that even the Republican Party's leadership cannot tap into.

Your social and political experiment was brilliantly executed when you made a right turn to appeal to the Evangelical Christian base. Suddenly, millions of people who were on the fence about voting for you fell into line and pledged to vote for you because you "found god." You have proven that the Republican Party is a corporation utterly dependent upon theocrats, without any clear set of beliefs outside its determination to put a winner at the head of the Executive Branch at all costs.

Today was the final nail in the platform you created and I, for one, am incredibly impressed at how expertly you played the game. Today, your candidacy destroyed the Sanders campaign and that is an impressive thing. Today, Bernie Sanders endorsed Hillary Clinton for Democratic Presidential Nominee and mortgaged his entire philosophy and organization because all his principles collapsed underneath the pragmatic need to prevent you from being elected President Of The United States Of America.

I get it. Your candidacy was masterful and it has utterly destroyed every illusion about American politics. You have struck down every illusion the electorate might ever have had. Even if the Republicans were to nominate Hillary Clinton as their candidate (as I suggested would be an ideal move for them in this article here!), Sanders has destroyed his credibility and cache by endorsing Clinton even before the Democratic National Convention. Your candidacy compelled Senator Warren to abandon her long-held principles to endorse Hillary Clinton; you effectively showed the electorate just what the principles on the Left truly are! You have, singlehandedly, made the 2016 election about Donald Trump and his vision for America.

So, because I get your plan, I see what comes next, just like you do. Next week when the Republican delegates meet and nominate you as their nominee, you declare victory and decline the nomination. Again, no need to be coy with me: I get it. You have seen all the projections and know that there is no electoral math that would give you the Presidency. You know that failed Presidential candidates fade from the spotlight and lose all credibility (Bob Dole, John McCain, even John Kerry faded from the public eye until he was nominated to be Obama's Secretary Of State, and have you seen the glazed look on people's faces when you say the name "Mitt Romney" as they try to place him?); a shrewd businessman would never let that happen to him.

And the Presidency is not something that would work for Donald Trump. The President is accountable to Congress, the Courts, the American electorate - it is not a top-down managing style exhibited clearly on The Apprentice. Governing is about compromise, working with people who disagree with you and reaching a middle ground: that is not your style. As long as there is a Legislative Branch, the United States is not a dictatorship and a Trump Presidency would be so gridlocked that it would make the pre-9/11 years of the Bush Administration look like a success story. As a CEO, you know that you can't effectively run a company with an entirely hostile Board Of Directors. Why would you want to spend four years of your life fighting for half- and quarter-measures of ideas that you're not truly invested in?

Obviously, you wouldn't. But then, that was never truly your plan. You want to "Make America Great Again" and that is not something that will happen from a President who is not supported by his Party and whose electorate is either afraid of or despises him. So, when the Republican delegates nominate you next week, you decline the nomination, the Party scrambles desperately to try to find a candidate to run as their standard-bearer and the Democrats are thrown into equal chaos because they have spent so much time and effort focusing on how to try to beat you that they have not presented any solid rhetorical ideas to run on (save, of course, Sanders, who just destroyed that philosophy by endorsing Hillary Clinton). You step aside, shrewdly refuse to endorse anyone, and Clinton wins the Presidency by exploiting the chaos on the right and the surrender of the Left (Was that your plan all along? Was it a coordinated effort between your campaigns?) and you are left with the power and capital to do whatever you want.

My thing is, I can't see what comes next for you. It is easy for you to declare victory - you proved the point you set out to at the beginning of your campaign - and the resulting systemic changes and debates within the American electorate represent the greatest chance to Make America Great Again, but what comes next? By illustrating the malleability of the American electorate and the two major political parties, you have proven the system as it exists is irrevocably broken - even your supporters know that you are not the man who can fix that!

So, you become the hero, opening the eyes of millions of people to the fault lines in American politics and set the stage for the builders in the political architecture to Make America Great Again. Whomever becomes President - Clinton, or on the off-chance the Republicans find a nominee with a pulse - owes you a debt of immense proportions for essentially installing them as President, giving you the clout to do whatever you want in the private sector. You are the hero, you have built the cache that comes with ruling the debate and forcing all other candidates to accept that you are THE political force to be reckoned with or stopped.

What do you plan to do with that power and influence? Is this a scheme to roll out the next big Trump product? Is this how you introduce your next big investment opportunity? What could it possibly be? Having turned all debate on you, you have illustrated your clout and ability, but governing is not about those things, whereas the cache of Brand Trump will never be higher than right now, allowing you to do whatever you want in the business world.

So, I was just hoping you might give me a sneak peek as to what that is.

Sincerely yours,
W.L. Swarts

[In the interest of full disclosure, the essential concept behind this article came from my wife, who - very early in the primary season turned to me and said of the Trump candidacy, "Is this a joke? Wouldn't it be hilarious if he was kidding, got the nomination and then said 'fuck you' at the Convention?!" She is a visionary.]